Using synthetic biology to make cells tomorrow's test tubes.

ABSTRACT: The main tenet of physical biology is that biological phenomena can be subject to the same quantitative and predictive understanding that physics has afforded in the context of inanimate matter. However, the inherent complexity of many of these biological processes often leads to the derivation of complex theoretical descriptions containing a plethora of unknown parameters. Such complex descriptions pose a conceptual challenge to the establishment of a solid basis for predictive biology. In this article, we present various exciting examples of how synthetic biology can be used to simplify biological systems and distill these phenomena down to their essential features as a means to enable their theoretical description. Here, synthetic biology goes beyond previous efforts to engineer nature

SUBMITTER: Garcia HG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4837077 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature